I was trying to play Pokemon Black on it but for some reason it kept freezing after I tried leaving my house after I started. So I went and downloaded the kernel and what not off the website (r4i-advance,com) and I followed their instructions to update some stuff. After it finished I had to reboot, so I did and now my DSi won't recognize my R4 at all.

First, i have to say, i know little about this card, this card is not a good R4 card, but the official site says it can work on DSi V1.43, then it should be able to work on your conosle after update. Are you sure you have updated your card successfully., did you see the "update finish " messgae. i met this problem before, but my card is r4i gold from r4ids,cn, because i turned off during the update process, when i turned on again, my console didn't recognize it any more, but i used another flashcard to reflash it and made it work again.